Deeplinks

Now that the FCC’s “Open Internet” net neutrality rules have been published in the Federal Register, opening the door to legal challenges, the lawsuits are piling on.

On Friday, Verizon appealed the order in the Washington, D.C., Court of Appeals, arguing that the FCC overstepped its authority in issuing its net neutrality order. Verizon had filed a related claim back in January shortly after the rules were first released, but the court held that suit prior to Federal Register publication was premature. MetroPCS at the time lost a similar challenge on this basis; it has yet to refile post-publication.

Chilling Speech Through Violence

Update: A significant edit was made to the original piece on which this commentary is based. See * for additional information.

In a recent Washington Timeseditorial titled “Internet trolls, Anonymity and the First Amendment,” Gayle Falkenthal declared that “the time has come to limit the ability of people to remain anonymous” online.* She argued that any benefit to online pseudonyms has long since dissipated and anonymous commenters have polluted the Internet “with false accusations and name-calling attacks.” Newspapers, she wrote, should ban them entirely.

The year was 1986. Top Gun was the top movie, Super Mario Bros. 2 was the hot videogame, practically no one had ever heard of email, and mobile phones were clunky and expensive novelties the size of a brick.

On October 21st of that year, the President signed into law the Electronic Communications Privacy Act or "ECPA", to better protect our electronic privacy against unwarranted government snooping.

ECPA was forward-looking when Congress passed it, considering that the World Wide Web hadn't even been invented yet and that if you were savvy enough to have email you probably dialed up to a BBS to get it. But now, eons later in Internet time, technology has passed the law by.

Just last year, the Humble Indie Bundle blazed onto the gaming scene with what seemed like an impossible business model: allow customers to pay what they want for DRM-free games, and let them choose how to distribute their contribution between the developers, the organizers, and two worthy tech charities. People supported EFF for online rights protection and Child's Play, which supplies games, toys, books, and cash to children’s hospitals. The result has been nothing short of miraculous, and we are happy to announce that the digital goodness is back with The Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle!

In what is becoming a well-settledpattern, Righthaven again finds itself on the losing end of a motion, with its case thrown out and owing the defendant – here, Leland Wolf, proprietor of the It Makes Sense Blog – costs and attorneys' fees for bringing a baseless copyright case. The lawsuit, Righthaven v. Wolf, is also notable for being the leading case among more than 50 that were filed in Colorado. Pending a motion to dismiss, the Colorado court stayed the remaining cases.

Books are books whether we read them in a library or on a Kindle or iPad, but California laws are lagging when it comes to protecting reader privacy in the digital age. That's why EFF is a supporter of the Reader Privacy Act, a bill that has passed the California legislature and is awaiting Governor Brown's signature to become law.

Who's looking over Californians' digital shoulder and why does it matter? You can take our quiz to find out what's at risk -- and how Californians can protect their private reading records. Then tell Governor Brown to sign the Reader Privacy Act to ensure Californians don’t have to compromise their privacy when downloading electronic books, using online book services or even buying books from their local bookstore.

EFF has long complained about export restrictions by the U.S. Departments of Treasury and Commerce that deny citizens access to vital communications tools. In the past, this has affected, among others, Zimbabwean activists trying to obtain hosting providers, Syrian businesspeople networking on LinkedIn, and ordinary Iranians trying to download web browsers.